Happy that 343 will continue to make Halo games because Halo Infinite core gameplay was amazing. I just hope campaign goes back to traditional and they scrap open world because it doesn’t work imo. Also, I don’t think grass is always greener because I don’t think for example ID can provide as good of an overall experience like 343.
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Hope they keep the open world, it was great IMO. Probably even moreso with co-op. Could obviously be fleshed out some more though.
Should be pretty easy to do a mix of open world with more tight interior sections. That’s basically what they bad, but the interior sections were kind repetitive and could use some work.
That said, the Halo talk might be better suited for a different thread at this point.
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I do appreciate the message being short and straight to the point. No dance around it. Now I just hope those who lost their job gets to rebound elsewhere.
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Well said Nintendo’s employees’ numbers are below 7000. Compare that to 221000 from Microsoft or even 1.3million from Amazon. A pay cut would work for Nintendo numbers but not for this corporations.
Last I heard, Activision was hiring like a thousand people. Stay in the family heh.
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One more comment on Halo matter. Absolute baffling how there are some that are hating on the news when I am willing to bet my job that they were bashing Xbox for “killing” 343. It’s a no win situation, but you know what?
Screw them.
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Isn’t this what Farsight said just here?
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It’s hard not to read that second tweet as sarcastic
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In my best Captain America voice; game developer’s… unionize.
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I really hope this becomes the case as I’m not a fan of 343i becoming like the Initiative, farming out the majority of the work to a secondary studio. I’d prefer it be kept in house. The only question with the in house approach is how easily are they going to be able to rebuild the team after all of the reports of mismanagement and the negative impact on the developers themselves. I just read a depressing thread from a former dev who was basically broken mentally and emotionally from her time at 343i while another dev expressed going through the same thing after leaving 343i. I know many of the leads are no longer with the company but it can’t be easy to win over talent with the reputation surrounding the studio.
If the change is to come, it will be a long (and hopefully positive) road…
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Don’t see the point in laying off a bunch of people just to replace them with different people, especially in roles where they don’t seemingly need to be replaced.
A lot of folks read that tweet as ‘still business as usual’ but to me this restructuring still indicates a change in strategy. Sure, campaign isn’t dead but it isn’t going to be built the same way. I’d say co-development is still likely, which is much different from being a franchise manager.
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co-development is what they have doing in some capacity - with Certain Affinity handling Project Tatanka, Skybox with Forge, Spearsoft with maps etc…
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Perhaps but equally they aren’t laying off staff based on what 343 needs or how 343 is performing (though this won’t have helped) - they’re laying off staff cause Microsoft mandated 5% of staff be cut from the wider company and tough choices had to be made at Xbox. Ultimately some cuts across the company simply aren’t going to make sense. If 343 still has a team working on single player content odds are they’re gonna need more people at some point whether it comes from expanding their team or working with external partners. The former isn’t going to happen any time soon but this economic downturn won’t last forever.
I do think like you say though they’ll be doing things differently for a while and relying on co-developers.
I think the the cuts at 343 reflect a change in strategy, otherwise 343 would not have been hit as hard as they were relative to the other studios.
I suppose it could be a temporary measure, but if the intent was not to substantially change the way 343 operates I would expect the cuts to have been applied across studios in a way that wouldn’t impact any of them too much.
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I don’t think the layoffs really speak to anything about 343 specifically. Out of all the Microsoft studios they’re the one that have already shipped their big AAA game. So if they’re not doing any campaign DLC as has been reported, then having a full production head count while being years away from even being in pre-production makes 343 the most obvious choice for layoffs.
a good post i saw on reeset.
"It just feels like such short sighted thinking. I understand laying off the teams behind HoloLens and stuff if they see no real future there. And when they laid of Mixer, that I understand. It sucks, but I understand. But laying off a heap of people who are already trained, knowing that at some point people will need to be re-hired shortly. I saw a twitter post from someone who had been there for 13 years and had just gotten laid off. 13 years!! Thats a lot of experience to lose. Its just such weird business thinking. I am sure if they really really wanted, they could find roles for them; its not like Nintendo lays off half the Zelda staff once Breathe of the Wild is done.
Not to mention, I can’t imagine it is good for morale. I don’t know, its strange to me. Then again, I am not in charge of a massive massive company so eh, maybe that is why :P"
the game is and has been failing for years. now people are crying over cuts? F this goon
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Nintendo overall has less than 7thousand staff, you can’t compare them to 221 thousand. I do however agree that it’s not a good look and can’t support it.
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